Subject: RE: dubious assumptions about IPv6 (was death of the Internet)

From: "Yuri Ismailov (KI/EAB)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2004 12:48:21 +0100

I share pretty much the views expressed on the page.
Small addition to that would be the fact that current "transition" proposals are killing the possibility of transition as such. IPv6 is strongly dependent on IPv4 through various "ipv4 compatible" addresses, which are essentially private IPv6 addresses, i.e. not globally routable. BTW, not the only private v6 addresses in this sense. This basically means that it will be nearly impossible or at least extremely hard to wash out IPv4 from the implementation. Personally I think that removing IPv4 can not be justified.
Instead of introducing two networks internetworked in a proper way, there are two networks tightly coupled to each other. Besides all, such approach nearly exclude the design of yet another network, which can be naturally internetworked with existing networks. Are there many believers that IPv6 is the last one and forever?
The power of layering was heavily underestimated if not ignored. Isn't it clear enough that we would be nowhere if bridging of link layers would take over internetworking of networks. Is this imaginable situation? 
The ambitions driving the new network design certainly deserve respect because it is natural to improve things but hardly the way it is being done.

-----Original Message-----
From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]]On Behalf Of Keith
Moore
Sent: den 14 januari 2004 18:29
To: [email-masked]
Cc: [email-masked]
Subject: dubious assumptions about IPv6 (was death of the Internet)

Since the topic of IPv6 transition seems to have surfaced in this
discussion, I thought I'd send a pointer to my argument as to why a lot
of the common assumptions about IPv6 transitions are dubious.  

I put these things in a web page to avoid needing to re-type the same
arguments over and over, and because I think I express things more
effectively in this form than when trying to finish an email message on
a difficult topic before going to X  (where X is one of
{work,lunch,dinner,bed}).  One downside is that the web page isn't
directly tailored to a specific list discussion - so some of the 
assumptions listed on the web page are apropos to the recent discussion
on this list while others are not.

http://www.cs.utk.edu/~moore/opinions/ipv6/dubious-assumptions.html

Responses should go to my private email address if you want me to see
them - I've disabled my subscription to the ietf list and am currently
only scanning the archives once every few days.  (In general, it's a bad
idea to assume that you know whether someone will receive a reply sent
to the entire list.)

---

From: Iljitsch van Beijnum <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2004 15:03:01 +0100

> I share pretty much the views expressed on the page.

I don't share all of them (9 billion people in 2050, 3.7 billion usable 
IPv4 addresses, show me some math that makes this work) but where on 
this page is there a point being made? It seems more like a fairly 
random collection of statements.

> Small addition to that would be the fact that current "transition" 
> proposals are killing the possibility of transition as such. IPv6 is 
> strongly dependent on IPv4 through various "ipv4 compatible" 
> addresses, which are essentially private IPv6 addresses, i.e. not 
> globally routable.

??? Which kind of IPv4-related addresses would a host with native IPv6 
connectivity and IPv6-enabled applications need?

> BTW, not the only private v6 addresses in this sense. This basically 
> means that it will be nearly impossible or at least extremely hard to 
> wash out IPv4 from the implementation. Personally I think that 
> removing IPv4 can not be justified.

Removing IPv4 from the code would be a peculiar idea to say the least. 
But running IPv6-only works for the most part. I tried this on the most 
recent version of MacOS and it's very easy to disable IPv4 for all 
interfaces except loopback. If you manually configure a nameserver 
that's reachable over IPv6 and use IPv6-capable applications, no 
problems whatsoever. People do give me weird looks when I say that I 
want to test running IPv6-only, though.

> Instead of introducing two networks internetworked in a proper way, 
> there are two networks tightly coupled to each other. Besides all, 
> such approach nearly exclude the design of yet another network, which 
> can be naturally internetworked with existing networks. Are there many 
> believers that IPv6 is the last one and forever?

Forever is a very long time. IPv6 is far from perfect, but none of the 
issues are such that replacing the protocol because of them makes 
sense. If we're going to see something new it will probably be a 
niche-only thing for a very long time. But since a simple lack of 
address space won't be an issue in IPv6 (of course this leaves the 
complex lack of address space) it is almost certain that it will be 
possible to translate back and forth between the new protocol and IPv6 
in a way that's compatible with existing IPv6 implementations, so 
deployment won't be an issue.

> The power of layering was heavily underestimated if not ignored. Isn't 
> it clear enough that we would be nowhere if bridging of link layers 
> would take over internetworking of networks.

Talking about power, where are you going to find the power to run those 
16 million+ entry CAMs at 10 Gbps+ without a network layer?